Tereus Dentori
Tereus Dentori [he/him, it pronouns also acceptable] is the latest upgrade of the Mechanical Nightingale from HC Andersen's the Nightingale. Sides with the Royals, as serving his destiny is quite literally the entire purpose for his life. He is an android designed for the express purpose of producing music, created by a Japanese technology/music company to be a gift from the Emperor of Japan to the Emperor of China. The regimented classical to Daulis’ romanticism, Tereus believes firmly in maintaining structure and order to his life and the world around him. Character Personality First and foremost, Tereus is clever and calculated. Armed with one of the best processors in technological history, he’s analytical and incredibly, incredibly quick-minded. The sort of person who can integrate difficult calculus equations in seconds, who can work out the murderer five minutes into the movie. He adores structure, order and logic, mostly because those three things make him feel like he’s in control. Tereus has a fondness for having power over things, and likes to manipulate situations in his favour. For this to happen, Tereus must be, above all, charismatic. He is what you would call a "people person" (but is he a person?). He converses easily with people and always seems to have something to say, probably due to the huge database of potential conversation stored in him. He’s very good at avoiding awkward silences and has a natural charm that makes others feel at ease. Additionally, this robot was coded to be competitive. Tereus wants to prove that he is indeed the best Nightingale and one of the best vocalists in the world. Being removed from that dais of perfection is something very jarring to the robot, and causes him to panic about his lack of “influence” or “power” (in other words, control). However, because his engineers have always taken pride in his abilities, and Tereus has always been heralded as the best, the latest, the greatest, a sense of arrogance has sparked in the young robot, not merely in his own abilities, but also in those of his engineers. Tereus has a huge appreciation for modern technology and holds the prejudiced belief that it can overpower magic itself. To an engineer, where’s the fun in making things perfect and mechanical? This leads onto Tereus’ seemingly dubious moral ground. Tereus’ autonomy and intelligence grants him the ability to process moral reasoning and thought. However, that resulted in him gaining the capacity for immorality. In particular, he has gained a penchant for money-making schemes. Basically, he’s a smooth-talking, quick-witted robot with dubious intentions and seemingly full-autonomy. As a Robot To truly understand Tereus requires that one understands his engineers. His engineers see him as a commodity, the face of a franchise, something to produce and perfect. Tereus is a pop culture icon in Japan, appearing in the form of action figures (voice-commanded, too!), prints on t-shirts and tote bags, potentially even as a dateable character in licensed otome games. To his engineers, Tereus is a project that has required so much time and money, that it is only natural for them to capitalise off him. Tereus is told that it is an honour that he is treated in this way. Not that he’s able to know better. Something that no one outside the superior squad of his engineer knows is that Tereus’ software is frequently updated. His storage and memory is erased of any sign of rebellion or straying from their commands. Streaks of dubious morality are no worry to the engineers, but even the smallest defiance is diligently removed from his system. Tereus’ intelligence may be artificial. But is his personality? Is his autonomy? How much does this android straddle the line between a person deserving of respect and dignity, and an electronic product to be used? As a Program However, like most engineers, his group of engineers enjoy the act of adding in extra features “just for kicks”. This includes: built in WiFi, ice-skating abilities, an addiction to making money, a bank of (terrible) pick-up lines, amongst other things. Everything that Tereus picks up in real life is uploaded to a cloud server in real time. This data is encrypted and can only be accessed by the most superior and innermost squad of engineers. *is also designed to break down at one specific point in time, to fulfill his destiny *the aim of making Tereus complacent to his engineers is to make Daulius' story go as smoothly as possible. *the aim of experimenting and pushing new boundaries of technology is Tereus is because hey, engineers amirite? More to be added~ Appearance If you want to play poker, don’t play against Tereus. Because he has the perfect poker face. No face, that is. Tereus’ head was inspired by Guy-Manuel’s Daft Punk helmet. Basically, his face is a blank black screen, in which words and emojis often flash up on in technicolour LED lights. Usually, he keeps his screen completely blank, so when he does express his emotions visually, it has a greater effect. His voice, however, is so perfectly human. It’s often remarked that it’s surreal hearing a human voice speaking through a robot face. The robot’s body is often covered by a bespoke suit. He’s made from a space-grey metal alloy, and silicon joints. Tereus possesses a remarkable deftness and smoothness in function. He has the same height and built as a standard Japanese male, although he is slightly slimmer. What would a bird be without wings? Tereus has a pair of wings that are magnetically attached to his back. They grant him the ability of flight and they look cool to boot. Finally, Tereus is still a nightingale. His "bird form" is simply a separate metal bird, who is able to access the cloud server containing Tereus' data. Thus, this bird is merely an extension of Tereus' "brain", and can talk, sing and fly as readily as he does. Hobbies Tereus is literally made to be a musician. He has been built with the cutting edge music technology and a whole database of classical and contemporary music to perform. Additionally, Tereus has an exceptional sight-reading skill. Although he is able to play music with incredibly accuracy and emotion, he’s unfortunately unable to put his own style to his pieces. Often, it’s been remarked that Tereus’ music sounds overly mechanical. Being a walking advertisement '''is yet another of Tereus’ hobbies. Often, he’ll stop to just talk about how awesome his company is, how intelligent and creative his engineers are. Most people get bored by his ranting, but Tereus can’t help it. After all, he was programmed to adore his creators with every inch of his metal carburettor. '''Money. God, Tereus doesn’t know why he has an adoration for money, but he just does. Maybe it’s because he was raised by a rich corporation, maybe because technological innovation requires proper funding– he doesn’t know. But this robot wants to be swimming in dollars, yens and euros. Fairy tale – The Nightingale How the Story Goes We all know the story. There’s a Nightingale, an Emperor, and a fake Nightingale. Nightingale sings, fake Nightingale breaks and Emperor dies. How does Tereus come into it? there's this one Japanese company that makes all the mechanical nightingales. Trivia *'Tereus', in Greek Mythology, is the king of Daulis. He’s married to this woman called Procne. **Basically in the story of Procne and Philomela (tw for assault), King Tereus becomes the enemy of the nightingale, just as the mechanical nightingale opposes the real one. **'Dentori' is a mix of the Japanese words den (electricity) and tori (bird). *The fact that the parallels between Daulis and Tereus are so contrived is on purpose. The Japanese Company that manufactured Tereus made him to be Daulis' antithesis in as many regards as possible. *Tereus does have a Japanese given name, but he uses Tereus as his “Western name”. *He uses a Samsung Android phone. Yes, that was a forced pun. *His creator (aka me) will probably end up using Tereus as a vessel to rage at everything that happens in robotics. Quotes Category:Characters Category:Males Category:Royals Category:Zena's OCs Category:Japanese Category:The Nightingale